Time will vindicate my stewardship to Benue people – Suswam

Former Benue State Governor, Gabriel Suswam has said time will vindicate his stewardship to the state.
This remark was part of a lengthy press release which came hot on the
heels of his failure to stop a probe launched against him by the
State’s current Governor Samuel Ortom.
Read full press release below:
Having observed with much concern and sympathy the ongoing plight of
the workers and people of Benue State under the reign of the Ortom
administration, I consider it pertinent to make my views known on a
number of salient issues.
While growing up as a teenager, I witnessed the reign of the first
Executive Governor of our dear state, late Apollos Aper Aku, a man who
gave his all to the development of the state in the four years of his
governorship, during which time he put in place landmark achievements
which are still standing the test of time to date. But I also witnessed
how he was rewarded with mischief by the political elite and rejection
by the people who were manipulated and misled into scorning such an
innocent man as a petty criminal.
Aku died prematurely, an abandoned, sick and sad man. Today, time
alone has been merciful enough to give to him his due, and so we are
left with no option but to recognise his true worth and the quality of
his legacy which in his lifetime was dismissed as the worthless work of
‘an-or sugar’- a diabetic.
Rev. Fr. Orshio Adasu came along years after Aku as the second
Executive Governor of the state and with uncommon forthrightness and
courage, against daunting obstacles, he erected landmark achievements in
the state within a period of less than two years, among which is the
first state-owned University in the northern part of Nigeria, the Benue
State University, Makurdi which sufficiently redressed our disadvantaged
status in tertiary academic enrolment in the country.
But Fr. Adasu too found no appreciation from the people he gave so
much to and he died a sad and abandoned man who could not even afford
the standard of medical care needed to keep him alive.
When I assumed office as the fourth Executive Governor of the state, I
had a deep passion burning in me which largely derived from the quality
of exposure and orientation I had acquired from eight years of robust
political leadership participation at the National Assembly as a
frontline member of the House of Representatives. There I came face to
face with the realities of leadership as being a matter of
uncompromising determination fuelled by deeply-insighted vision. I had
also acquired a rich store of social collateral attended by a sufficient
degree of gravitas such as armed me to the hilt for the office of
governor.
So I was able to hit the ground running and surmounting the many
obstacles which were replete in the socio-political terrain. My guiding
belief was that I had come to build and not at all to destroy, to make
progress going forward from where the efforts of my predecessor, George
Akume, stopped. I still believe that it is the cumulative efforts of one
administration after the other which have brought this state this far,
without their having been a need for an inquest into an era from a
succeeding one, until this present situation preceding my tenure of
office which has seen a determination on the part of my successor, Gov.
Ortom, to denigrate my person and distort the verdict of the legacy of
my stewardship.
The reasons advanced by Ortom for his actions against me keep
changing and increasing with the latest being that the people of Benue
State have demanded of him to probe me, and I think there could be
nothing more absurd than that. Ortom is certainly at liberty to make any
claims as to what the Benue people demand of him, but on an empirical
basis it is clear what the people require of this administration as a
matter of priority; and that is that the administration clear the mess
which it created by its legion of malicious lies and fabrications during
the campaigns leading up to the last elections, which it now attempts
to label as the ‘Suswam Mess’.
Did I, Gabriel, in my capacity as the 4th Executive Governor of Benue
State, create and leave behind any mess in terms of administering the
affairs of this state? The anti-graft agencies which Ortom has
instigated and sponsored my being taken to will determine that. Then
time also which keeps unfailing will deliver its verdict on my tenure of
office same as it did on Aku’s and Adasu’s tenures, regardless of what
their traducers sought to do against them after they had left office.
Today the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state and the Ortom
administration seek to runaway from the mess they created for themselves
during the campaigns to the last elections by labelling it the in my
name. How are the major problems in Benue State today created by Suswam?
About salary arrears, during the campaigns, I told the people that on
assumption of office, I had, without prompting from any quarters
whatsoever, increased the wages of workers in the state when I
discovered those wages were pathetically low. I had consistently paid
the workers their wages for almost eight years without fail, until the
slump in national earnings from crude sells forced on my administration
an inability to pay salaries as consistently as I had done, and this was
not a situation exclusive to Benue State alone, but it was same for 28
other states.
Unfortunately, the APC and Ortom, in their desperation for votes,
chose instead to manipulate the people by telling them lies that I
didn’t pay salaries just because I had corner the monies for my own use,
and that I was the only governor owing workers salaries in the country.
Today, the reality has dawned on everyone. I did not owe workers
salaries out of choice, but because I just couldn’t do otherwise with
the dwindling accruals from the federal allocations and this was a
nationwide problem.
Today, the APC and Ortom are faced with the naked and ugly reality of
going before the people and telling them the truth that they lied to
them, that they were dishonest and cheated their way to power. Instead
of doing this, they have chosen again to be manipulative by seeking to
mislead the people to accept that the situation on ground can be given
the name associated to me. And I ask, will there be no end to the
manipulations and deceit of the APC and Ortom in this state? Can they
not for once be honest to the people?
On the issue of loan and bailout, the Ortom administration, in its
usual gimmickry and targeting to further manipulate the people,
continues to rack up ridiculous figures which it ascribes as the debt
profile of my administration. Yet, it has deliberately refrained from
divulging the details of how those figures run and tally up to the sole
liability of my administration and not that of the cumulative era of
past administrations in the state.
But at the same time the Ortom administration has in the span of less
than half a year accumulated a debt profile more than twice the amount
that I left behind, after a full eight years tenure in office, during
which I delivered on core developmental imperatives and did leave behind
a legacy which I daily go to to sleep satisfied will in the course of
time vindicate rather than vilify me as the ruling administration in the
state currently seeks to.
Currently, Benue workers have had to go on the streets to force
Ortom’s administration to pay them their basic entitlements even when
the administration has borrowed more than enough monies for that
purpose. It is becoming a matter of increasing concern what the motives
and focus of the administration are, even if within the short span that
might be permitted it if the course of justice is allowed to prevail in
the matter of the legitimacy or otherwise of the electoral mandate it is
presently holding. And this is a concern that is increasingly
underlining the psyche of the Benue people who are daily confronted with
the obvious lack of direction of the ruling administration and its
penchant and appetite for deceit and manipulation.
I like to emphasise at this point that I am satisfied that I left
Benue State better than I met it, and I have implicit faith that time
will surely bear out the truth regarding my tenure of stewardship as
governor of this state, and only then will the people judge between
deceit and fact, same as has happened for Aku and Adasu before me.
I want to use this medium to thank all my friends who have stood by
me, encouraging me by word of advice and prayers. It is also important
to mention here that, i appreciate all the messages sent to my Facebook
account and page, it may take long but I’ll read them all and respond. I
urge all my friends to as a matter of urgency remove themselves from
all other fraudulent Facebook accounts and pages in my name. This will
leave the fraudsters with no other choice than to close down such
accounts.